IIT Kanpur MBA Blog

The Department of Industrial Management and Engineering, IIT Kanpur presented the flagship event of Prabandhan – Reflexions on Sept 28th, 2019. The 3rd edition of the event on ‘Tackling challenges of the VUCA world' was concluded with a promising and on a cheerful note. With thunderous applause and riveting questions, the event opened to bridge the corporate world with the real world. Reflexions 3.0 saw the participation of 6 eminent industry leaders and management gurus to share their experiences from their respective trades. They were Karan Marwah, Partner – CFO, Advisory Services, KPMG, Harshavardhan Chauhan, Head-Marketing & digital transformation, DLF Shopping Mall, Neelesh Talathi, CFO, Pepperfry, Hari T N, CHRO, Big Basket, Raj Gupta, General Manager, HR, TCS and our very own Professor, Devlina Chatterjee, Managerial Economics, Applied Econometrics. The talk focused on "How well, can the industries predict the results of their actions in a world of Volatility, Unc...

The 27th of September marked the beginning of the much awaited 8th edition of the Annual management conclave of IIT Kanpur, Prabandhan. The MBA students of IIT Kanpur, hosts to this event, gave a warm opening speech, introducing esteemed faculty Dr. Rahul Varman, Dr. Devlina Chatterjee and keynote speaker of the day Abhinav Johri. The conclave began with the auspicious lighting of the lamp followed by insightful speeches by Dr. Varman and Dr. Chatterjee. The event hosted Mr. Abhinav Johri, currently director and practice head at EY India as he spoke about Versatility and it's paradox in changing times. Mr. Johri began by telling us a little about himself and his journey. As he described how his organisation worked and what the consulting business was like, he described his ideas on how times haven't really changed at all. After all, the first AI code was written in the 60s and other such examples which never really appeared all of a sudden. He sh...

It was our privilege to invite Mr Mahipal Nair, Chief Human Resource (South Asia/India) – Nielsen, for a guest lecture on Organizational health at MBA IIT Kanpur on 3 rd August 2019. Mr Nair has been associated with Nielsen since 2006 in various HR roles of increasing responsibilities. He is responsible for all people processes including leadership & talent development, transformation & change management. Mr Nair commenced the lecture by drawing a parallel between organizational health and human health. He extended the discussion by defining the factors, which affect human health, after bifurcating them as internal and external factors. Internal factors being psychology, beliefs etc. whereas external factors being climate, demography etc. This comparison served as a base point for further lecture. He then moved the focus of lecture to analyze the qualities of a successful organization by discussing over the best team we could remember and then he made his po...

The speaker for the seminar was Satish Rajarathnam, HRBP of Cognizant . The topic for seminar was divided into three heads: Region wise analysis of the world, Political risk at present and vertical view of the financial services. Discussion started with the analysis of the economic condition of various region of the world (US, Euro, UK, Asia). Thereafter, the focus of discussion shifted to contemporary political risks (for example: Brexit, US-China trade war) occurring due to the changing economic condition in various regions and its impact on the Indian economy. Later, there was a brief discussion about various financial services and how they are impacting global economy . Speaker also enlightened us about the three types of disruptions that are essential for the overall development of a company. The three disruptions are as follows: Business Model Disruption, Operating Model Disruption and Technology Model Disruption. Learning: A company must cause disruption in a...

1.      Learning is not confined only to classrooms As the first semester is over, I realize that apart from classroom subject matter, there are a lot more things that I have learnt here. Learning takes place in almost every aspect of one's life at MBA IIT K. The induction activities that our seniors conducted before the official start of the semester was a great way to interact with the batch-mates. The group projects and the assignments that followed after the semester began, taught us the art of working productively in teams, time management, importance of feedback and learning while mingling with the people from diverse backgrounds. Every week, we had eminent speakers from various top positions in the corporate world, sharing topics that they were passionate about which helped us to constantly expand our knowledge base into new areas. 2.        Be prepared to leave behind your comfort   zone In the class yo...

On Saturday, 7 th October, 2017, the Industrial and Management Engineering department of IIT Kanpur had the opportunity to host a very insightful and informative seminar by Mr. Ashish Chandra on “Healthcare Systems and Analytics”. The seminar commenced with Mr. Chandra introducing himself. An alumnus of IIT Kanpur, Mr. Chandra has worked in various top tiered Pharma and Healthcare companies, and has 12 years of experience as a decision scientist. Currently, he is the Associate Director of United Health Group, prior to which he had worked for seven and half years in Market RX. Mr. Ashish started the seminar by talking about what is healthcare. Then he explained the various models in healthcare provision: National Health Services - Beveridge Model, Social Health Insurance - Bismarck Model, Community Based Health Insurance, Voluntary Health Insurance, and ‘Out of pocket Payments’. In each of the models he talked about the revenue sources, groups covered, pooling organizatio...

In the 21 st  century, a brand must understand their customers' root motivators in order to make the kind of value-based connection that is increasingly important to the modern consumer. To provide students with insights on this prevailing topic, Department of Industrial and Management Engineering played host to a seminar by Mr. Utsav Rawat, Head of Marketing-Novartis, who has a decade of experience in the health industry, to talk about value based marketing in Pharmaceutical Industry in India. The seminar began with Mr. Utsav talking about the innovation giants, Apple and Tesla, who have redefined marketing as seen by the world with their unique approach and perspective. While talking about pharmaceutical companies, he said that on average, each company globally spends 8000-10000 crores on research and development and approx. 15% on marketing. He emphasized on the role regulation plays on innovation in healthcare industry. While talking about difficulties for ma...

The Department of Management and Industrial Engineering hosted a seminar by Mr. Gaurav Malhotra, Managing Director, Medicover Healthcare who provided a clear and in-depth insight into the profound opportunities that the health care industry has and how the industry is adapting and changing with time. Medicover healthcare is an institution that believes in empowerment, integrity, teamwork, passion for quality and Entrepreneurship. Mr. Malhotra began the presentation by a quote by Albert Einstein which talks about how easy it is to make simple things complex and how difficult it is to make complex things simple. He then went on to successfully explain the complicated concepts in the healthcare in simple terms that can be easily understood irrespective of background. He explained that, leadership behavior to him meant that one must be able to take decisions based on customers’ needs, must know how to unleash potential and must lead by example. Mr. Malhotra exp...

“Brand yourself for the career you want, not the job you have.” Dan Schawbel Gone are the days when the term branding was used with reference to companies and products, but today, even an individual has a brand identity and a brand reputation to maintain. To talk on this intangible, career deciding concept, IME invited Ms Ruchita Sharma, Head of Talent, India, Fidelity International. In today’s world, it is a natural human tendency to fulfill behavioral expectations of the people around us rather than representing our own brand. We try to be what people expect us to be rather than follow our own paths. Ruchita in her discussion touched upon a few points that would help one to build a personal brand. Build you own label Going with the flow is often easy but is not always the right path to choose. To build one’s own label, people need to stand for something, build multiple self- brands while knowing how to personify them throughout one’s career. Have ...

The Department of Industrial Management and Engineering organized a seminar by Mr. Anoop Bhatia, VP, ICRA Limited; who provided immense insights into how the corporate ratings assignment is performed and how sensitivity analysis helps assign these. The seminar began on a light note, with Mr. Anoop offering Lao Tzu’s take on forecasting and quoting Evan Esar’s witty remarks on economists. He explained how an analyst actually is involved in presenting a result oriented outlook along with the forecast of industry demand, involved in financial planning, establishes goals and analyses the market to provide well-informed guidance on the possibilities. The projections are normally done with 5-7 years of data, which helps create a holistic outlook including up-cycle and down-cycle data, including those of the competitors in the industry. For vitality of project specific projections, the data utilized can even stretch up to 20 years. However, he professed from experience that the m...

The Department of Industrial and Management Engineering at IIT Kanpur played host to a seminar by Mr. Rajib Roy, CEO of Quantum Spatial Ltd., who put forth an overview of how analysis of geospatial data can bring about a paradigm shift in the world of information and how its subsequent analysis can result in benefits to various organizations. Mr. Roy was quite forthright in bringing out some merry factoids about his career and his perception of the various walks of the world that he had been involved with. He eased us into the new and emerging world of geospatial data analytics, and the current playing fields surrounding this mystery. With the detection of trees having potential to cause forest fires in dry California terrain, to scouting and negating their possible interaction with live transmission lines with actual analysis on the z-axis, geospatial data analytics encompasses a very broad horizon of areas of application. He then provided certain insight from the histor...

The Department of Industrial and Management Engineering, IIT Kanpur, witnessed a wonderful seminar on the Internet of Things by Mr. Arun Karna, MD, AT&T Global Network Services India Pvt. Ltd. He brought us closer to how limitless and pervasive the concept of IoT is and talked about the potential multi-trillion industry which has caught the eye of business enterprises that look forward to transform businesses without human-to-human or human-to-computer interactions.  Mr. Karna explained as to how the flow of information occurs from the sensors and control systems to the backend systems that are the hubs of data and API (Application Programming Interface). This back and forth of data can be analyzed to deduce astonishing solutions. He called IoT as the convergence of technologies that can work beyond the human imagination. He gave a business perspective to this scientific phenomenon wherein the stakeholders aspire to increase their revenue, streamline operations, red...

Organisation Culture: Acta Non Verba The Department of Industrial and Management Engineering at IIT Kanpur hosted a seminar by Mr Tojo Jose, CHRO at Muthoot Fincorp Ltd. on the topic of organization culture. Organizational culture is a guiding factor that acts as the genetic code of any organization. Mr Jose talked about how important it is for an individual to ensure that his/her values resonate with the values of the organization. The culture incompatibility can prove to be a menace for anyone working in an organization, even if the person has a good skill set. He talked about the articulated values like integrity and dignity that are implicit in nature and always keep our moral compass duly pointing north. The three C’s - Confront, Complaint and Conform - form the basis of how an employee identifies himself/herself with the organization. The confronting and complaining individuals often find it difficult to gel with the existing culture, and compromise forms the fourt...

IIT Kanpur | MBA 2016-18 batch students organised informal city meets for the upcoming batch’s (2017-19) prospective students to clear admission related queries; and to give the prospective candidates a glimpse of the unique MBA program and life at IIT Kanpur as per their viewpoints based on their year long experience.  The meets were organised in the two metro-cities: Delhi and Kolkata, on Sunday, 18 th June, 2017. The date and cities for the meets were decided based on online survey amongst the candidates, taking current location and availability of majority as the criteria.  Minutes of the two meetings are as follows:  1) Place- C.C.D., Janpath, New Delhi Student Facilitators- Abhinav Arora, Shivam Gupta, Siddharth Vohra Queries were related to the department, the courses offered, Extra-curricular activities, internship opportunities, final placements and the campus. The prospects were informed that they would have 5 compulsory subjects in ...